A wide variety of materials ranging from distilled water to acids are carried during manufacture, shipping and use in plastic bottles (e.g. gallon bottles). The shape of many of these bottles has become an industry standard wherein the bottles include a capped top and a side handle with upwardly facing flat areas adjacent to and on opposite sides of the handle. The caps for the bottles may be two-part safety caps which require downward pressure in combination with rotary motion to remove the cap from the bottle.
One of the principal problems in using such bottles has been in the area of packaging the filled bottles for shipment and ultimate use. Typical packaging has been conventional container assemblies fabricated of corrugated paper board material. However, regulations have been enacted to require that the container assemblies withstand certain impact criteria before bottles filled with toxic or hazardous material, such as anti-freeze, bleach, acids and the like, can be shipped.
In particular, as of Oct. 1, 1994, United Nations Regulations require that a container assembly for holding and shipping plastic bottles be capable of withstanding a vertical drop of forty seven and one-fourth inches without the bottle cap breaking or the bottle splitting. This criterion applies equally when safety caps are used, even though safety caps have a tendency to break more easily than conventional screw-on one-piece metal or plastic caps. These criteria also must be met in the event that the contents of the bottles become frozen, such as during shipment in high altitude aircraft.
Heretofore, most prior art attempts have failed in meeting the above regulations. Their failures have been primarily attributable to their inability to isolate the capped tops of the bottles from impact with surrounding portions of the container assembly.
Prior art approaches to protecting the bottles within the container assemblies most often include providing inserts within the assemblies for covering the capped tops of the bottles. These inserts not only fail to isolate the capped tops of the bottles, but the inserts cause other problems as well. For instance, it may be desirable to fill the bottles while in the container assembly. Such inserts considerably reduce the efficiency of such mass production. Such inserts also have been found to interfere with container sealing equipment, again reducing the efficiency of mass production.
The present invention is directed to solving the above problems by providing a container assembly for bottles, such as the plastic bottles described above, wherein the capped tops of the bottles are completely isolated from surrounding structure of the container assembly, and wherein the capped tops of the bottles are maintained in isolation during regulated impact conditions.